Light rail ridership hits 100k in a single day

Transit riders wait for the Green Line.
Transit riders wait for the Green Line in downtown Minneapolis on in November.
Bridget Bennett | MPR News

Metro Transit's light rail lines hit a new milestone this month, recording more than 100,000 riders on a single day.

It happened on Sept. 3, thanks to three sporting events along the blue and green lines on a weekday, said spokesman Drew Kerr, and it's the first time the system has hit six figures.

"It's not every day that we have Twins, Saints, Gophers, work commuters traveling all together on the same day, but on Thursday, Sept. 3, that was the case," he said.

That number compares to Metro Transit's 2014 average daily system-wide ridership of about 288,000.

The Green Line carried almost 64,000 riders on the record-breaking day. A little over half as many rode the Blue Line. Together, that's more than 40 percent more than recent average daily ridership.

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